For four-door sedan vehicles which generally have the rear wheels very close to the rear doors, it has been found that when driving on wet, dirty and muddy roads, dirt and mud will typically accumulate between the door and door opening outboard from the primary door seal in the area immediately forward of the rear wheelhouse. In some extreme cases the primary seal has been found to be ineffective at preventing water and dirt thrown by the rear wheel at the area between the door and door opening from entering the passenger compartment of the vehicle. In either case, unsightly accumulations of dirt and mud are deposited between the wheelhouse and the door, requiring additional effort during cleaning and presenting a risk to rear seat passengers of soiling clothing during entrance into, or egress from the vehicle. Moreover, because of the proximity of the door opening to the rear wheels of such vehicles, undesirable road noise levels are often encountered.
In response to the problem of dirt and mud accumulating between the rear wheelhouse and the rear passenger door of four door sedans, and to reduce noise levels, automobile manufacturers have provided a secondary wheelhouse weather seal which is attached to the wheelhouse sheet metal and resides in the gap between the door opening and the door, outboard from the primary door seal. Conventional wheelhouse seals are extruded elastomeric materials which have a constant transverse cross sectional size and shape which is not readily conducive to achieving an aesthetically pleasing, tight fit capable of accurately tracking the shape of the gap between the door and the door opening, especially when the door opening has a complicated non-linear or non-circular shape such as a door opening having offsets, indentations, sharp turns, or a variable radius of curvature. In order to facilitate a better fit of the extruded wheelhouse weather seals to the vehicle rear door opening, molded details, metal inserts, or both are generally utilized. Molded details are frequently used as transitional pieces between separate extruded weather sealing members to conceal gaps therebetween, especially when it is not possible, or is extremely difficult, to follow the shape of a door opening with a single extruded weather sealing strip, as is the case with sharp turns, offsets, indentations and other complicated door opening shapes at the vicinity of the wheelhouse. Metal inserts embedded within the weather sealing strips are often provided such as by coextruding techniques to serve as shape retention means for forcing the weather sealing strips to more accurately track the shape of complicated door openings, such as those having a variable radius of curvature, sharp curves, or the like. Frequently, molded inserts are used in combination with metal inserts and a plurality of sealing members are utilized in a wheelhouse weather sealing assembly to provide a suitable fit between the sealing members and the door opening.
While the prior art wheelhouse weather sealing assemblies have generally achieved sufficient conformity with automotive vehicle rear door openings to reduce road noise and provide suitable sealing against dirt and mud, installation is complicated, involving the attachment of a plurality of components such as molded transitional pieces and complicated coextrusions having metal inserts. Such prior art seal assemblies generally do not provide an aesthetically pleasing, continuously perfect fit between the sealing members and the vehicle door opening and often include unsightly discontinuities and irregularities. The foregoing deficiencies have resulted in high installation and manufacturing costs, an aesthetically unpleasing appearance, and a slight but undesirable increase in total vehicle weight.
Accordingly, an inexpensive, lighter weight, single component wheelhouse sealing system capable of achieving a more accurate, more aesthetically pleasing, and tighter fit with the vehicle door opening would be highly desirable.